


Portraits From Skyrim

by Ariadne_Dai



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Elder Scrolls Lore, F/F, F/M, Ideological Study, Interesting NPCs Mod, Mantling, Multi, Original Player Characters, The Long Night, The Radiant Dark, Vignettes, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 20:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20784362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariadne_Dai/pseuds/Ariadne_Dai
Summary: A vampire bent on necromantic revolution.The destined Dovahkiin, whose home is the wilds.A Redguard Archmage who sees himself as a servant of the gods.A Khajiit monk who likes conversation.Four quick character studies about residents of Skyrim I know very well.





	1. Tnav

As is of course well known, near the end of the year 204, 4th Era, Skyrim was taken over by a necromantic cabal, an event known both after and, in the confusing fashion of prophecy, _before_, as the Long Night. The instigator was one Tnav Jacobin, a conjurer, illusionist, and cryomancer with a dangerous level of talent for her youth, who rejected the authority of Jarls and kings and espoused a peculiar doctrine of peasant revolution— a revolution to be guided, of course by her and her followers.

None of this might have taken place had Tnav not caught a case of vampirism aboard the ship from High Rock to Winterhold. It was at first reluctantly that she adopted a nocturnal life style. But she soon turned her talents in Illusion magic towards hypnotizing and seducing fellow College students, teachers, and tavern-keepers all across Skyrim for their blood. Tnav had always craved the most forbidden, arcane magic, and isolation only deepened that rebellious streak. She made no secret of her obsession with the Dwemer, who she always claimed had been struck down for their embrace of rational thought over the worship of tyrannical gods. Searching for the lost works of the first Archmage on behalf of an independent-minded professor, one Olivia Meronin, Tnav stumbled onto the Radiant Dark, a cabal of magic users devoted to an obscure prophecy, predicting a time of great upheaval called the Long Night. Betraying and killing Meronin, Tnav devoted all her resources thereafter to building up the strength of the Radiant Dark, rising immediately to an almost messianic position of authority. Her only friend remaining from the College days: the unscrupulous Ka’jiit J’Zhargo, who became her group’s electromancer.

Not long after her ascension, the Radiant Dark uncovered a vampire named Serana slumbering in a long-abandoned crypt. Tnav was smitten, and resolved to aid Serana in killing her father, Harkon, leader of the Volkihar, one of the oldest vampire clans. In the course of this, Tnav and Serana uncovered an artifact of Auri-El, the elven face of the sun god: a bow capable of blotting out the sun. Harkon had planned to use the Bow to give vampires free reign across Tamriel; Tnav and Serana thought they could turn it to a more subtle purpose—bringing about the Long Night in all-too literal fashion. Once their forces were joined to the remaining Volkihar, their army was in place.

Skyrim had not expected a third front to open in its civil war, least of all one crewed by skeletons, thralls, and other resurrected dead. The eastern holds were caught completely unprepared and fell quickly. The skies turned blood-red, the land grew even colder, and crops withered on the vine as the dead armies marched—surely fear was as effective a weapon as any in Tnav’s arsenal. After a prolonged siege at Solitude, the Radiant Dark emerged with the bloody head of Jarl Elisif the Fair. The body of Ulfric Stormcloak was brought to Tnav soon after, and he became a favorite undead thrall.

Tnav’s Protectorate of the People scarcely lasted a year. She was assassinated on the steps of the Blue Palace by Offryn, one of her own lieutenants. Serana was inconsolable; some say that she removed herself from history altogether, and returned to the crypt where she had been found to slumber for another thousand years. Offryn’s government collapsed further into infighting, and only a new coalition of landowners, led by the daughter of Sybille Stentor, managed to restore Skyrim to anything like normalcy.

And yet—perhaps the Long Night succeeded. Our world has come to resemble the one Tnav sought to bring about. We still worship the gods, but at a more skeptical remove; and the disintegration of the old Empire has led to an interest in representative, more egalitarian systems of government. Despite her failure, Tnav’s ideas, once thought outlandish, have influenced our own. We may be tempted to dismiss her as a crazed vampiress, a second Queen Barenziah, or a mere naïve adolescent, yet that would do injustice to the complex woman at the heart of the Long Night incident. We disregard the young idealists of the world at our peril. Few can claim to have exerted so great a force over the course of history.


	2. Lukka

Well, sit you down, and I’ll tell you about Lukka Whitefang.

Lukka grew up on a farm near Bruma in the old Emperor’s country, not knowing who her father might be. Her mother had never told her who her father was, just that he’d been a passing traveler from Skyrim who had stayed for a time. One winter, her mother’s heart gave out in the chill. Lukka had to fend for herself, learning to hunt in the woods, to take steel and drive off the bandits who rode through.

There came a day when Lukka tired of trying to coax life from the frozen earth. She left her old farm for the wilds, and set off north, for her father’s country, to see if she could find word of him and learn who he might be.

Those were the days when the Stormcloaks were first seen in Skyrim. I know you don’t need telling about their bravery, their mighty blades, the tough leather of their armor blue. From the moment she stepped into Skyrim, Lukka Whitefang’s fate was linked with theirs. She found herself captured by the Emperor’s men, to be put to death—yes, that was when the dragon appeared, yes, you know the story. But it was Ralof of Riverwood, a Stormcloak, who helped her escape the dragon’s attack, and it was Ralof’s sister Gurdur who gave her food and shelter afterward.

Yes, Lukka was a true daughter of Skyrim. Thanks to her mother, she had always kept the faith in the nine divines, greatest among them Talos Stormcrown, who built the old Empire but whose later sons forgot him. When she walked into Whiterun and saw there was a priest of Talos preaching in the square, she sat down and listened to his sermon from start to end. She was one of the greatest warriors among the Stormcloaks, cleaving the Emperor’s men in half with her massive battleaxe, and she helped them win the war.

But all that came later. Lukka’s first home in Whiterun was Jorrvaskr, home of the famed Companions, for she aimed to test her bravery by signing up with a group of heroes. They set her to tasks which took her all across Skyrim, which suited her just fine. Lukka’s heart was never in the cities. Years of living alone had taught her how to survive in the wilderness; how to hunt, how to cut meat from bone and start a campfire with naught but two sticks and a flint stone. She never took horse or carriage, but set off walking, just as she’d always done, far from the main roads with her walking stick and her fur cloak. She wanted to see every inch of her father’s country and learn all the lore of wild creatures and places, and by the gods, all say she did.

Now, Lukka found a companion or two in her wandering. Chief of all was the Redguard Gorr, who she met at the inn in Riverwood. Gorr was a man who liked to fight—he’d fought in the Arena down south—but more than anything, he liked to eat, and filled Lukka’s mind with tales of dragon steak, sabercat flanks, and horker stew. Those two wandered from Windhelm to Markarth to Solitude, eating all the animals of Skyrim between them, Gorr wearing his troll skulls and furs and swinging his steel hammer while she swung her axe. She would never forget traveling up to Lake Yorngrim with him in search of white wolf pelts for Ayla the Huntress, waking at dawn and stepping out of their tent to see the sun coming over the frozen lake, the ice all round stained pink with light.

Yes sir, those two hit it off, and though they parted to wander alone at times, where one saw Lukka or Gorr, the other was rarely far behind.

But I haven’t told you who Lukka was yet, without her knowing. Like I said, the dragons were coming back in those days, and Lukka found she had a strange power over them. She could understand the words they spoke, and she could speak them herself, casting fire and frost and force from her mouth into the world. And when she slew a dragon—and she slew many—she could feel the scaly bastard’s memories trickle into her mind, teaching her what his words meant. Time came when Lukka would go wandering into every old barrow she could find, reading the walls built by her ancestors until she knew what every line in dragon-speech meant. The Greybeards and the Jarls told her she was Dovahkiin, Dragonborn—the one with the dragons’ blood, whose task it was to slay Alduin the World-Eater and stop the end of days. And that she did.

But all that’s a story you’ve heard a thousand times before. They don’t tell often enough how the Companions helped her do it. She learned the old history of the Nords from Vignar and Falkas, and turned when she needed guidance to Kodlak Whitemane, the Harbringer, for he’d always looked out for her among their ranks, and taught her the ways of battle. From Eorlund Greymane of the Skyforge, she learned how to make her own weapons and armor. From then on, she never bothered with stores, but gathered her own materials and melted down the armor of her foes. As with hunting, whatever she could do herself, she did.

The day came when the Companions invited her to join the best among them, the Circle, and Lukka learned a great secret: for generations, the Circle had been werewolves, using the beast-blood granted by Hircine to enhance their power in battle. They offered Lukka this power, and she did not refuse. For there’d always been a part of her that wanted to disappear into the wilderness, to become one with the beasts that dwelt there and live as freely as they did. Too, she imagined sinking wolf’s-teeth into Imperial flanks, leaving no soldier alive. She took the blood.

In the days of her lycanthropy, Lukka would run as a wolf across the plains, abandoning all but the thrill of hunting her prey, to wake alone in some unknown field a week later, and puzzle her way back to lands she knew. But she soon found it was as much curse as blessings. There were times where her wolf-mind got stuck in that form, and knew not the way to bring her back to human again, and she found that axe and bow were the better weapons for taking down Imperial soldiers, as wolves tended to be shot from afar by crossbows. She listened to the words of old Kodlak, who feared that in death, Hircine, not Sovngarde, would take his soul. And yet she could not give up the beast-blood.

When Kodlak was slain in battle with their old enemies, the werewolf-hunting Silver Hand, it was Lukka who avenged him, and it was Lukka who took up Kodlak’s mantle as Harbinger. Left to her were his old journals, where Kodlak told of his regrets, his choices as harbringer, his journeys to the southern lands as a younger man. When Lukka read these, she wept, and grieved anew. For Kodlak wrote of a girl he met on a farm outside of Bruma in a certain year, and reading this, Lukka knew Kodlak was her own father.

In her heart were mingled anger at him, and love, and grief. Taking all these in hand, she went to seek the witches who had first laid the curse of Hircine on the Companions. She brought back a witch’s head, and with its burning, Lukka Whitefang set her father’s soul free. It would be years before she would consider her own.

That’s only the half of her tale—Lukka did much else besides. She fought with Ulfric Stormcloak to set Skyrim free—she had his doubts about the way he treated the Dunmer and others in his city, but thought that he was the Nords’ best option, so long as he had good advisors like Brunwulf Free-Winter. She reunited the shards of Wuthraad and returned the legendary axe to Ysgramor’s tomb. She married Gorr—the gods know she was never comfortable in a Temple of Mara, but once they were out of their wedding clothes, they feasted all that night on horker stew. She infiltrated the Embassy of the Elves, disguised in red hair and ridiculous jewels and stole every silver plate in their cupboards, dumping them with elven helmets all by the side of the road. As soon as she escaped, she took a blade and shore the red hair, letting her golden tresses grow slowly out again.

And yes, she slew Alduin, quenching his malice until the end of time when he must appear. That end hasn’t come for us yet. And praise be to her for that.

The tales Lukka told of where she’d been—they brought forth disbelief and awe. For she said she had gone to Sovngarde, mead-hall of heroes, on a dragon’s back, and spoken with Ysgramor, and wrestled with Tsun. There, she had seen Kodlak Whitemane, safe at last in his true resting place. With the aid of the valiant dead, she had slain the World-Eater.

Only one thing was strange to her—in Shor’s mead-hall, she had not seen Shor himself. An empty throne at the head of the table stood waiting for its owner, and she knew not why. Nor did her listeners, for the longest time.

But what is known is this:

After her return, Lukka Whitemane again went to the witches. She took and burned another head, this time for herself, and removed herself from Hircine’s grasp. On that day, she disappeared from this world, never to be seen again. I’ll tell you what I think she did. I say she went back to Sovngarde.

Lukka figured something out, something the rest of us can only guess at. She went back because she knew why Shor’s seat was empty. It was waiting for its owner. It was waiting for her.

They say that the gods bleed in and out of each other, that great beings with mighty souls who act with one purpose soon become one. In the old days, when we spoke of the guide of men, our mighty father, we called him Shor. When a great Emperor of men came along, we called him Talos Stormcrown, for that was who Shor now was. Talos bore the blood and the Voice of the dragon. So did Lukka Whitefang.

All along, Lukka was the god she sought.

In Sovngarde she sits enthroned even now. She resides forever in glory, ever slaying the dragon of the end, allowing time to exist in the world of men. She is the god who comes into the world, looking after us mortals as the elven gods never will. If you fight with honor and bravery, you’ll meet her one day, though I don’t know what face she’ll wear then.

They say the Redguard warrior Gorr disappeared around the same time she did, that he no longer wanders Skyrim in search of food and battle.

I like to think that he’s there with her, sitting at her right hand, feasting on every meat imaginable, wrestling with Tsun and Olaf One-Eye, that he’ll be by her side after the stars burn out and Talos has come a thousand times again.


	3. Arrek

Archmage Arrek D’Tanel always credited his great deeds to his strong relationship with the Divines. To his mind, it was they, especially Kynareth, who had guided his path from his homeland to the distant northern wastes of Skyrim, and who had entrusted to him his destiny.

As a boy, Arrek had been fascinated by magic. Once, a travelling wizard passed through his town. Young Arrek watched the mage fling fireballs at bandits who had been harassing the townspeople, and pass his healing hands over the wounds of those who had been injured in the scuffle. When the boy asked where he had learned this magic, the man smiled, and spoke one word: Winterhold.

In the years that passed, Arrek tried to forget the incident. Magic was forbidden, the province of elves, the elves his father and brothers had fought in the Great War, and Hammerfell asserted its new identity as a free state by declaring such things beneath its Ra’Gada warriors. Bowing to the wishes of his family, Arrek reluctantly became a soldier, stationed at a fortress at the border in the Jerall Mountains. The border to Skyrim.

Within a year, the temptation, when the object of his obsessions was so near, became too much. Arrek abandoned his post, departing into Skyrim, bent on one thing only: the chance to learn magic at the famed College of Winterhold.

The incidents surrounding his crossing are, of course, now legendary: the capture by foolish soldiers, the encounter with the dragon, the flight through the burning wreckage of Helgen. But Arrek put these behind him with haste, stopping only at the Riverwood blacksmith’s house and the Jarl of Whiterun’s hall, to warn him about the return of the dragons. Within the day, he had caught the carriage to Winterhold.

The College was everything he had hoped it would be. Here was his community, the people who loved magic as he did, who taught it and wanted to learn it, who had made it a part of their lives. He was known as a quick study to his professors, and a fast and loyal friend to his peers. One fellow apprentice was Brelyna Maryon, a daughter of Telvanni mages who wanted to learn without the weight of her family’s name. Arrek knew little of this, and met her as an equal; naturally, the two quickly became close. He would speak fondly, in later years, of exploring the nearby Dwarven ruins of Arkngthamz with her, and of taking down the bandits camped at Valtheim Towers with his fireballs and her summoned familiar. Indeed, Arrek made a name for himself as an adventurer, wielding fireball in one hand and conjured sword in the other, a grinning, handsome young man in dreadlocks and a ponytail, diving into every ruin in Skyrim in search of forgotten magic.

Arrek’s studies passed uneventfully for a time, but when he returned to Whiterun, he found a dragon waiting for him, and, after managing to slay it, a strange summons to the ancient monastery of the Graybeards. There, Arrek learned that he, of all people, carried the blood of dragons, what the Nords call Dovahkiin. Arrek became fascinated by the history of the Greybeards, and a devout follower of their Way of the Voice. The power he bore, in speaking the words of dragons, should be used only in True Need, not in search of personal glory, as Ulfric Stormcloak had done. The goddess Kynareth, he learned, had given the gift of the Voice to men, so that they might save themselves from the dragons. For Arrek, this meant Tava, bird-spirit of the air, who had guided his ancestors from Yokuda to their country of Hammerfell. In later years, he always said that it was Tava who guided his path to Skyrim, and who chose him to bear the responsibility of the Dragonborn.

Much has been said about his role in Skyrim’s Civil War. It seems unquestionable that his intervention played a critical role in securing the province as an Imperial stronghold for future generations. War troubled him—he would never forget, on his first day in Skyrim, witnessing a Stormcloak soldier bound in rags and chains by Imperial soldiers, nor how the man’s eyes pleaded with him for release. But upon considering the issues carefully, Arrek knew his heart was with the Imperial cause. He had no love for a man like Ulfric Stormcloak, who could abuse the Argonians and Dark Elves in his city while trumpeting the freedom of Nords, nor for Nords who spat on and despised elves as his family in Hammerfell did. A year into his studies, somewhat against the cautions of his teachers, he brought his fireballs to the Imperial cause. His work, first as a grunt soldier, then as a Legate of increasing importance, may well have turned the tide He was pleased to witness the ascension of widowed Elisif the Fair to the throne of Skyrim, who he quite liked, perhaps because she reminded him of Brelyna.

Other incidents cemented his fame. He is known to have captured the dragon Odahviing, subdued several groups of necromancers, come into the possession of several Daedric artifacts, and, of course, prevented Tamriel from being destroyed by the ancient dragon Alduin. Little is known about the exact nature of the artifact the College obtained from Saarthal in those years, but Arrek alluded to it being powerful enough to be confiscated by the reclusive Psyjiic Order. In the power struggle around the artifact, Archmage Savos Aren was killed by Thalmor agents; Arrek played a pivotal role in resolving the crisis, retrieving the powerful Staff of Magnus from an undead Dragon Priest even Savos Aren had been unable to slay. In the aftermath, he was very quickly recommended for high roles in the College’s administration, despite his youth. In the years that followed, Arrek worked as a close assistant to Archmage Tolfdir, and when Tolfdir retired, all knew there was no question that Arrek would take over the position. As Archmage, Arrek worked to combat Nordic fears of magic and resentment of the College, sending his students to villages across the province as healers, helpers and protectors. It would be fair to attribute the rise in positive attitudes towards magic to Arrek’s efforts.

Despite his achievements, Archmage D’Tanel always remained humble. He saw himself as a faithful agent of the gods, chosen to carry out their will in Tamriel, not as any special or superior person. After his adventures, he settled in a small house in the Pale with his growing family, his only indulgence a vast library tower, said to contain a copy of nearly every book in Skyrim. It was said that he was at work on a work of comparative religion that would unify the Yokudan, Cyrodillic, and Old Nordic pantheons—the three pillars of his abiding faith.

In his later years, as an old man, he is known to have journeyed to the island of Solstheim, where he helped end the tyrannical rule of an ancient Dragonborn priest known as Miraak. The journey took him to the realm of Hermaeus Mora—Arrek wrote only that he had obtained great magic from him, at no small cost, but that he believed his soul was safe. In his writings, he shared as much as he could of what he had learned, but given the secretive nature of Mora, it is suspected that he took some knowledge to his grave.

In any case, Archmage D’Tanel made a great impression on all those around him, and will be remembered for his kindness, his generosity of spirit, and his tireless efforts to further magical knowledge in Tamriel. It is difficult to imagine Skyrim without him.

The Archmage is survived by his wife Brelyna, their daughters Lucia and Sofie, and their grandchildren. Services will be held in the College gardens at noon, 1st of Last Seed.


	4. Kriniit

“You want me to talk about Kriniit? Well…um, okay! I guess I can do that, sure.”

“Kriniit’s a different sort of person. I don’t mean just that she’s a Khajiit, that part’s…pretty obvious. I mean that she’s different from the usual sort of people you meet in this province. Or, really, anywhere? Ugh, I’m not explaining this right. It’s like…everyone you meet in the taverns and temples is boasting about what makes them the greatest warrior or wizard. The things they’ve done, like they have to do something important. I mean, I was the same way. One of those…people. I got it into my head that I was going to become a master thief, high up in the Thieves’ Guild. I even named myself after one of them? Isn’t that stupid? I was so hopeless at it, too. I should have known.”

“What? Oh, it’s all right. It’s nothing I didn’t tell Kriniit at some point. I guess…being around her has made it easier to tell it? It feels safer, somehow, to think about it.”

“Anyway, Kriniit’s not like that. She doesn’t feel like she has to do something important. She doesn’t go poking into old crypts or volunteering to go fight bandits, even though part of me thinks that maybe she could. I mean she’s good with those claws and that stick, after all. But, no, Kriniit, she just seems happy to be alive. Just living and breathing, out in the fresh air, or walking out in the woods under the autumn leaves, it’s like…that’s enough for her. It makes you think about things differently. I know it did for me. It’s like, just being around her makes you a little happier, you know? I think that’s what her name means, kind of. I think. She told me one time, but I’m not sure I have the details right.”

“It probably comes from her being a monk for such a long time. Before she decided to get out and see the world. Did she say anything about that? Yes? Okay, good. What? Oh, the Khajiit don’t really have separate words for monks or nuns. They’re all just the same there at the monastery. Monk’s what she calls herself. As a matter of fact, I think she got used to there being no differences. Sometimes people will say something and she’ll look down at herself in a weird, confused way, like she isn’t used to being called a woman. It’s kind of interesting, actually.

“But anyway. She’d been at the monastery of Mara since she was real little, I think. It’s in Cyrodil. Somewhere near the Gold Coast, I think. I’ve never been there. But a year ago she left. She says she realized she’d never seen the world. She wanted to make sure she did that. So she came up here. She’s still pretty pious, don’t get me wrong. But she decided being a monk could wait a little while.

“You know the thing she likes doing best, actually? Talking to people. She’ll talk to people working in the fields, wandering through every town, no matter how small it is, asking them all about their lives. Listing to conversations, too. She even talked to the crazy Khajiit at the inn in Ivarstead. She nodded along to all the ideas he had about a conspiracy among the Greybeards, just listened for hours. I mean, who does that? But that’s Kriniit. I think she just finds everyone interesting. I’ve learned a lot about people, I guess, from being around her.”

“The most adventurous thing we’ve ever done? I guess there was one time. That time we rescued Derkeethus from that cave he’d fallen down into. There were all these horrible, twitching Charus bugs down there, trying to get him. I could barely function, I was so terrified. But Kriniit just whacked the bugs a lot of times with her big wooden staff, and eventually they went away. It was really something. I was proud of her. Anyway, we got him out of there. He and his friends were so happy. They couldn’t do much for us, but I don’t think Kriniit would have accepted payment, in any case.”

“But I don’t think about that too often. What I remember is how we helped the church of Mara in Riften get all those couples together. Helping send love letters, and stuff like that. We made so many people happy. That’s what Kriniit would like to be remembered for, I think. Helping people.

“I mean, she really, really helped me. She listed to me, same way she listens to everyone, and helped me work through all of my…guilt, and doubt, and fear. She even convinced me I wasn’t cursed. She didn’t have to say anything fancy. Just talked me through it. I’m…I’m really glad I met her.

“Next spring, she says she’s going to go see the country her ancestors are from. Elseweyr. What used to be called Elseweyr, I mean.”

“I think…I think I’m going to go with her.”


End file.
